Unique living?

Referring to our house as "unique" has become something of a joke. It can be translated as "a bit of a pain in the rear."

Our house is the downstairs unit in an upstairs/downstairs building. It isn't a duplex, and it isn't a condo and so everything to do with the unit has taken much longer than expected.

The first time we saw the house we talked to the builder and he talked about how the design had all sorts unique challenges, building-wise. If it were a duplex, they could have put a fire wall between the units and called it a day, but the upstairs/downstairs unique format made it hard to divide the units according to code.

The first time we talked to our lender we were told that because of the unique situation they weren't entirely sure that they would be carrying the loan, but their lawyer was talking to the Land Trust Lawyer and they were hoping they would come to an agreement. There was a lot of back-and-forth between the lawyers before they agreed to fund.

Insurance has proved to be a unique situation; we pay the land trust, who holds the policy on the land for both units, and then we have our own "indoors" insurance.

When we went to see our lawyer, she talked about our unique situation and how it took her longer than usual to review the file.

And that is the reason that we were supposed to close on March 28th and will probably close on April 25. Every person who has encountered our file has had a "huh?" moment and had to check and double check that everything is a-okay.

We're pretty excited about our unique house. But it has been a very unique first home buying experience.